Microsoft wins open-document format war

This Tuesday, Microsoft won an international standard designation for their open-document format, something that was quite unlikely according to the results from September votes. September saw Microsoft lose in front of an 87-nation panel.

So, after some serious lobbying efforts both by Microsoft and rivals IBM and Sun Microsystems the winner was Microsoft. Britain, Japan, Germany and Switzerland have supported Microsoft’s standard, whereas only 10, out of 87 votes, opposed the standard. Among these ten are Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, Ecuador, India, Iran, New Zealand, South Africa and Venezuela.

Still, this kind of pressure for speedy approval led to some objections, because Microsoft is a company whose Office software is featured on more than 90 percent computers worldwide. However, the Netherlands, which abstained from voting, commented that this will be like going through the express line in the supermarket with six carts; the standard is simply too big and that there are still a lot of questions.